BASQUE RACE. The Basque race is not confined to the Basque Provinces or to the southern side of the Pyrenees. On the French side of the Pyrenees three cantons of the Depart ment of Basses Pyri;mles, i.e. Labourd, Basse Navarre, and Soule, are inhabited by Basques, who, though they retain their own tongue, have not so fully preserved the characteristics of the race as their Spanish brethren, but are, anthro pologically, midway in skull measurement and other tests of racial affinities between the Au vergnats on their north and the Spanish Basques.
The Spanish Basques are a simple, brave, and independent people, willing to undergo any hard ships rather than surrender their mountain freedom. No invader was ever able effectually to subdue or to expel them. The Basque Provinces retained, until 1876, a separate constitution guaranteeing them many political and fiscal priyileges not possessed by the rest of Spain. (See FL'ERO. ) But on the suppression of the Carlist insurrection, which had its stronghold in the Basque Provinces and in Navarre, the old munities were abolished. The Basques are even prouder than the Spaniards, and the mere fact of being born in their territory secures the privi lege of 'universal nobility.' Escuahlunac is the name the Basques give themselves, a word which is usually taken to mean either 'eaters of acorns,' or 'dwellers in oak forests,' although many Basque scholars consider this meaning absurd. %Ind say that it may be derived from a root meaning 'way of speaking.' fheir country they call Escualeria; and their language, which is peculiarly their own, Eseuara, the prefix Escu being, perhaps, 'the old Osc, Vase, Vusq of Italy and 'Iberia.' The origin of the Basques is doubt ful. The researches of Humboldt and Slarrast have, however, established the fact that most of the early Iberian names are derived from the Basque. and that Basque was the language spo
ken by the primitive inhabitants of the entire peninsula of Spain, as well as by the Iberians.
On biological grounds the Basques are now placed with the Hamitic branch of the white races. Egyptians and Berbers. It is in this direction, not among the Finns and Esthonians, that their genealogy must be sought. The Basques are north African or European, not Asiatic. On this consult Collignon, La race Ulnae, quoted by Keane in Man: Past and Present (Cambridge, 1899).
There are at present about half a million Basques in Spain and France. three-fourths of whom are in the Basque Provinces. It is said that in addition to these some 200.000 Basques emigrated during the last half of the Nineteenth Century to South America, to which they have contributed a most desirable element in the popu lation ever since the beginning of Spanish Amer ica. on account of their great bodily strength, good habits, and industry. Many eminent Span iards have come from the Basque Provinces, the most noted being Ignatius Loyola and Saint Francis Xavier. For a more particular account of the Basque race, consult: Vinson, Les Basques et le pays basque (Paris, 1882), an excellent summary; the same writer's Essai dune bib liographic de la langue basque (Paris, 1891) ; Slarrast's edition of Humboldt. Recherche sur les inhabitants prinmitifs de l'Espagne (Paris, 1866) ; Hubner. Monanicnta Litigate Ibericte (Berlin, 1893) ; Michel, Le pays basque (Paris, 1857) ; and Bandrimont, Ilistoire des Basques (Paris. 1867).